Theme is innocence and epiphanies Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Theme is innocence and epiphanies - Essay Example According to a New York Times piece this January, the normal child, ages 8-18, uses over 7 ? hours a day with technology gadgets almost 5 hours of TV and films, equaling 2 ? hours of music, three hours of video games and internet, and only 30 minutes of traditional reading. This technology use, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, sums up to an overwhelming 75 hours a week (Stone 1). This information is not just sheer figures. However, they are a manifestation of the way the world is heading. There is a direct connection of the amount of time spent with gadgets and poor grades, obesity, violence, impatience, and mainly a loss of family interest. Therefore, it is safe to argue that children today still experience epiphanies from their daily experience within a technologically infused society (Stone 1). â€Å"Thinking, the ability to reason and reflect accurately, draws conclusions derived from our experiences, insights and knowledge. Thinking is what makes us human and has perm itted us to create, communicate, build, progress and become civilized. It encompasses so many phases of who our children are, as well as what they do, from learning, observing, questioning, remembering, and judging to innovating, deciding, arguing and performing† (Taylor 1). Families are being hurt by all of the new innovation. When a cluster of 4-6 year olds were asked to select between watching a television program and spending quality time with their parents along with siblings, 54% of them considered watching TV (Stone 1). In addition, according to a similar survey reported by the A.C. Nielson Company, the normal parent spends three and a half minutes only in a week to have meaningful discussions with their children. Technology is shaping a generation gap, which makes parents feel left out as they cannot relate to what their children are doing (Stone 1). Whether child recognition of their parents’ experiences or students paying attention in class, a child’s i mmediate surrounding establishes the kind of attention, which he/she will develop. In generations past, for instance, children dedicated considerable sums of their time to studying, an activity which offered few interruptions and needed both intense and sustained attention, memory and imagination (Taylor 1). The arrival of the television among other gadgets altered that concentration by providing children visual incentives, disjointed attention, as well as little need for imagination. Then the Internet was established, and children were propelled into an immensely different environment in which, since entertainment is the culture, consistent concentration is impractical, imagination is needless and memory is subdued. â€Å"Technology sets the mind to pay attention to information extremely differently compared to reading. The metaphor, which Nicholas Carr adapts is the difference between jet skiing and scuba diving. Book reading is similar to scuba diving whereby the diver is submer ged in a silence, visually controlled, negligent setting with few interruptions, and, as a result, is forced to focus intently and think intensely on the restricted information, which is available at that time. In comparison, using the Internet is similar to jet skiing, whereby the jet skier is skimming extremely fast along the surface of the water, open to

Mid-term Paper Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Mid-term Paper - Essay Example This way of conceptualization of the past is has increasingly been used in a number of field sciences such as geology and biology. In archaeology, uniformitarianism is one of the major concepts that have always been widely used to conceptualize the past. For example, many archaeologists believe that the contemporary natural laws and other processes in the universe have always operated in the past as they are today. Uniformitarianism is a theory on the gentle, natural progressions that were experimental on the landscape. It suggested that ice could corrode rocks and sediments as well could accrue and form various new terrestrial land forms in the earth (David, 341). Consequently uniformitarianism is currently widely used as the key principle in a number of fields of sciences such as geology and archaeology. The other ways that have widely been used to conceptualize the past include catostrophism, transmutation and gradualism. Tthe concept of gradualism as used in archaeology is based on the theory that gradual changes occur over time. The theory of uniformitarianism particularly suggested that landscape development occurred over long periods of time as a result of a number of gradual geomorphic and geologic processes. It shows that the present is the key to the past and it was a direct denunciation to the predominant philosophy of the time, catastrophism which held that only violent adversities could adjust the outward of the world. Generally the concepts of uniformitarianism, gradualism, and catostrophism among others have widely been used not only to conceptualize the past but also to help understand the important geological processes that have occurred in the universe and how such processes have influenced events (Baker, 243). Time plays a significant role in all the three concepts and archaeologists have discovered a number of pieces of evidence to support some of these ideas and concepts. How uniformitarianism is used in the conceptualization of the past Ge ologists, Historians and archaeologists often study the remains of the past gologic activity as well as the records of the ancient human civilizations to provide evidence of the specific time and of such activities in history. The concept of uniformitarianism has been widely used by scientists not only to help in the reconstruction of the history of the earth but also to create a timeline of events throughout the history. According to Browman and Douglas (88), black rocks with porous surfaces can be used by geologists as an evidence of the past events. It is however worth noticing that although the idea that there are uniform laws governing the processes of nature, it is often difficult to prove beyond uncertainty what actually took place in the past. In archaeology, the concept of uniformitarianism is rather a process of making an educated guess based on objective and observational evidence found in the material remains. Today, many archaeologists suggest the continuing uniformity of the universal processes can be used as a framework to understand how landforms and some aspects of nature come to be. This is particularly based on the assumption that the processes currently taking place are the same processes that actually took